Braveheart Investment Group PLC (AIM:BRH) updated investors on Paraytec, a wholly-owned investee company preparing to start a clinical study at the Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, testing for Covid-19 using its instrument CX300.
The CX300 testing instrument was developed to be a ‘more accurate, efficient and low cost’ test which can detect virus particles and give an accurate result in five minutes.
In the study, which will be run alongside the operations of the hospital’s NHS drive-through COVID-19 testing service for staff, Paraytec will test up to 100 participants.
By design it aims for half positive for Covid-19 and half negative – and the data will be compared to separate analyses by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.
Braveheart said the study is expected to start within the next two weeks and will last for around 4 weeks.
"The significant investment of scientific, technological and financial resources in the CX300 program over the past two years has been against a continuously changing COVID-19 background, but we are satisfied that we have adapted continuously to remain relevant,” said chief executive Trevor Brown.
“We believe our COVID-19 test, once verified by the initial clinical study, will be amongst the most effective and most advanced in development.
“We will therefore explore how Paraytec can offer it as a commercially available public testing service as an alternative to monetizing it via the outright sale of the technology as previously envisaged."
Braveheart noted that an initial batch of CX300 instruments is being assembled, tested and certified ready for sale. The intention is to make them available to research partners and laboratories for use in studying a wide range of medical and industrial applications.